Big Mac wrote:Has anyone seen a list of Warcraft/World of Warcraft races, and what books they are in?

I'm curious to know how many of the WoW races are covered, and how many would need to be homebrewed (or taken from other d20 System sources and modified).

Big Mac, I`ve got a pdf with WoW races for d20. I think d20. Somewhere it`s only 8 pages and no where near complete I`m sure. Let me scout around and find it and then I`ll link it to my 4shared account.

[1] Note: the non-construct undead formats (zombie, banshee, etc.) are templates applied on top of something, so could be applied to a PC, but they do not have a specific "as characters" section
[2] The race development in the web enhancement trumps the races as presented in this book, being more complete. Also, this was early enough that the Draenei backstory hadn't been changed yet, so the Draenei presented are the ones referred to as Lost Ones in Swamp of Sorrows (the degenerate form also seen in Warcraft 3), not the Eredar-like, light-infused Draenei of the Burning Crusade expansion.
[3] There is a section on Titans which could be adapted, but no specifics are written up here. (It's also neat to see that they already had the two Norse-based Titan tribes this far before WoW's launch, much less Wrath of the Lich King.)

I should add that the consolidated lore in the Warcraft RPG books (and manuscripts) available when they were originally building WoW were used as the canon sources to draw on. I'm sure they've built an internal lore-tracking system by now (given the number of people developing it), but originally that was the best way to find out that didn't involve picking Chris Metzen's brain. (And we know that working solely from memory, he screwed up a couple times (such as re-using the name Hakkar) and in a couple other places.)

Big Mac wrote:Are there other races (without the "...As Characters" sections) that are given an LA penalty? If it has a Level Adjustment, it is playable.

Nope. All the "[blah] Characters" sections are on the only entries with Level Adjustments, and they add additional details (e.g. stat modifiers for the race, special abilities, and suggestions on how to play it).

Big Mac wrote:Are there other races (without the "...As Characters" sections) that are given an LA penalty? If it has a Level Adjustment, it is playable.

Nope. All the "[blah] Characters" sections are on the only entries with Level Adjustments, and they add additional details (e.g. stat modifiers for the race, special abilities, and suggestions on how to play it).

That is interesting. Most other campaign settings have a percentage of monsters that are playable, but not fully statted up.

The strange thing is, Harpies actually don't have a racial writeup proper in the Manual of Monsters; no list of stat modifiers/penalties, no list of class features, nothing. It explains why a Harpy might become an adventuring PC, gives their favored class (Sorcerer) and notes about how armor affects their flight speed, but nothing else.

As for races... Whilst I don't have my copy of the Monster Guide (World of Warcraft D20's equivalent to the Manual of Monsters, these are the PC races I've seen in the other WoW RPG books:

Shouldn't leper gnome be a template (a bit like lycanthropy is)? I thought they were gnomes transformed by radioactivity.

IIRC, there was talk (but no action) of curing the leper gnomes in the MMO. I think I saw a leper gnome in a cage that turned into a chicken or blew up or somesuch.

Can ordinary gnomes be "converted" into leper gnomes? Can leper gnomes be cured?

Ivellius wrote:Harpies (weird case... +0 LA, but 2 racial hit dice, which is likely why they don't have a longer "Harpies as Characters" entry. Reverse-engineering their ability modifiers gives you +2 Agy, +2 Spt, -2 Int, and -2 Cha. Playing one at 1st level [which is not recommended because of their flight] would probably look like +2 Agy, -2 Int and -2 Cha with a reduced flight speed. Gain +2 Spt and improved flight speed at 2nd level.)

From what I recall, you can start a +HD creature as a zero level PC - in other words you could have a Harpie with two racial HD and no character levels. That would let you start of with an ECL = 2 PC.

Some of the MWP books for the Dragonlance campaign setting, came up with a system of breaking down the monsters and spreading out the abilities. With the ones that have an LA, they had to put in racial levels where the HD did not increase, but it should be easier to make a "Harpie Racial Class" that splits up the abilities into two levels (each with its own level). I think the way you worked out a 1st level harpie works pretty well*, but I think that a lot of players of 1HD harpie PCs would be tempted to use their 1st level feat-slot to buy some sort of flying feat.

* = I think only a BAB and saving throw split is needed.

Do any of the WoW books list flying feats that harpies can take? If someone seriously wanted to play one of those guys, they would need that information from Warcraft, core (or maybe other setting) books.

Big Mac wrote:That was some pretty good information that VoidWalker had.

With your own post, have we covered all the books yet?

So far as I know, yeah. I took everyone at their word that they did it correctly.

Big Mac wrote:Shouldn't leper gnome be a template (a bit like lycanthropy is)? I thought they were gnomes transformed by radioactivity.

IIRC, there was talk (but no action) of curing the leper gnomes in the MMO. I think I saw a leper gnome in a cage that turned into a chicken or blew up or somesuch.

Can ordinary gnomes be "converted" into leper gnomes? Can leper gnomes be cured?

Well, they're not. I know, I'm blunt. The thing about them being a template is that no other race really underwent such a transformation. Dunno why it affected the gnomes like it did; it would probably take prolonged and intensive exposure to transform more of the regular ones. A cure seems possible, but they haven't found it yet. Maybe one day. (Actually, that reminds me: I should go play the opening Gnome questline. It probably has some more info on that issue.)

Big Mac wrote:From what I recall, you can start a +HD creature as a zero level PC - in other words you could have a Harpie with two racial HD and no character levels. That would let you start of with an ECL = 2 PC.

Some of the MWP books for the Dragonlance campaign setting, came up with a system of breaking down the monsters and spreading out the abilities. With the ones that have an LA, they had to put in racial levels where the HD did not increase, but it should be easier to make a "Harpie Racial Class" that splits up the abilities into two levels (each with its own level). I think the way you worked out a 1st level harpie works pretty well*, but I think that a lot of players of 1HD harpie PCs would be tempted to use their 1st level feat-slot to buy some sort of flying feat.

* = I think only a BAB and saving throw split is needed.

Do any of the WoW books list flying feats that harpies can take? If someone seriously wanted to play one of those guys, they would need that information from Warcraft, core (or maybe other setting) books.

Yeah, yeah, that was what I was meaning--it's pretty unusual to have racial HD without any kind of level adjustment. A Harpy PC would be, effectively, a 2nd-level character. You would split the BAB (+1, +2) and saving throws (+2/+0 at "1st-level" and +3/+0 at "2nd-level"), but all of that is automatically split into the two Hit Dice because of the way they work (likewise feats and skill points--they have 5 assigned). I was trying to account for the stuff that isn't intrinsic to the HD (here, ability adjustments and fly speed, although I suppose claws could also go there). I'd also break up the natural armor bonus between the two HD. I hope that made sense.

Flying feats are, surprisingly, found in Lands of Mystery (you'd think MG, wouldn't you?). At least three of them are. And yeah, I'd definitely consider taking one of them were I playing a harpy. And I'd argue they don't need an LA as long as you account for their flight as the MG recommends--they're a decent option for certain things but not overly strong.

Big Mac wrote:Shouldn't leper gnome be a template (a bit like lycanthropy is)? I thought they were gnomes transformed by radioactivity.

IIRC, there was talk (but no action) of curing the leper gnomes in the MMO. I think I saw a leper gnome in a cage that turned into a chicken or blew up or somesuch.

Can ordinary gnomes be "converted" into leper gnomes? Can leper gnomes be cured?

Well, they're not. I know, I'm blunt. The thing about them being a template is that no other race really underwent such a transformation. Dunno why it affected the gnomes like it did; it would probably take prolonged and intensive exposure to transform more of the regular ones. A cure seems possible, but they haven't found it yet. Maybe one day. (Actually, that reminds me: I should go play the opening Gnome questline. It probably has some more info on that issue.)

From what I recall, I saw the gnome in a cage in a town between Ironforge and Gnomeregan that had a pub and a smithy. There was also a guy selling mechanical birds around the corner. The building was at the edge of the town closest to Ironforge.

Yeah, I remember there used to be a couple of gnomes north of Kharanos who sent you into Gnomeregan because they were working on a cure. I don't know if any of that stuff has changed? I figured with the Gnomes getting their own starting questlines maybe they had some more to say about it, but I haven't played a Gnome since Cataclysm (well, since ever).

Ivellius wrote:Yeah, I remember there used to be a couple of gnomes north of Kharanos who sent you into Gnomeregan because they were working on a cure. I don't know if any of that stuff has changed? I figured with the Gnomes getting their own starting questlines maybe they had some more to say about it, but I haven't played a Gnome since Cataclysm (well, since ever).

I've not played the WoW: MMO since my original 6 month subscription ran out and Blizzard let me spend several days downloading updates before letting me know I had no credit left.

Bizzarely, when I wrote to their customer services department to tell them I'd not been able to get online, they were unwilling to give me back any of the time I'd lost...but have been spamming me since offering free trials if I come back. If they had done that at the time, I probably would not have stopped playing.

But getting back to the subject, I've played two gnomes. One was with a friend where we did Beavis and Butthead as gnomes (and ran around saying "Heh! Heh!" to anyone that spoke to us). The other one was a PC that got all the hand-me-down items from a human paladin PC.